“Now it is I who must ask about word selection. What do you mean by ‘was seeing’?” She reverted to Mandarin. “Do you mean being attracted to – yes. Touching her backstage – yes. Having her in his rooms – yes. Fucking her – that, not having been there, I wouldn’t know.” She smiled wanly. “If you follow my meaning, Detective Zhong.”
“I do.” He got to his feet. “Have you got a passport, Da Wei?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll need to hold that for you.”
She balked for a moment then opened a small drawer in the table and handed over her way out of the Middle Kingdom.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Visitation rights don’t exist in Chinese jails. So when Fong, through Captain Chen, demanded access to the woman who murdered the man she loved, the penal system first had to find the woman then arrange how the meeting could take place. While the authorities worked things out, Fong tried to find a transcript of the woman’s trial. But despite his best efforts he couldn’t even find a record of the verdict. Fong had no doubt she had been found guilty but access to court records, like jail visitations in the People’s Republic of China, are not guaranteed.
The call finally came through. A place. A time.
The woman who murdered the man she loved sat quietly on a small three-legged bamboo stool and did not rise when Fong and Joan Shui entered the dank room. When the jailor began to close the door, Fong turned to him, “Don’t.”
The woman who murdered the man she loved sat looking at her hands. Fong looked at them too. Her slender fingers were now capped by ragged bitten nails. Only the false nail of her right ring finger remained from her fashionable French manicure. She pushed up the sleeves of her prison blouse and lifted her head. Immediately she saw the way he was looking at her. “Wait till they cut off my hair, then I’ll really be a treat to look at. Like her,” she said pointing to Joan, “a real fashion statement.”
Fong had actually been surprised that they hadn’t cut off the woman’s hair. It was pretty much common practice. They claimed it was to keep down the lice but Fong knew otherwise. Like so much of prison life it was to break down any sense of anyone being special, being other than a prisoner at the total behest of the state.
“You’ve been in prison,” she said. It was a statement not a question.
Fong nodded. “This woman knew that I had been in love. Now she knows that I have been in prison,” he thought. He looked more closely at her. But she looked away saying, “Don’t.”
He began to apologize then decided against it. Beauty was to be shared. It was just one of the many talents. Fu Tsong had told him that, then quoted some parable or something from the West’s Bible about hiding money under apple carts or some such nonsense. As with so many things from that most questionable of books, Fong had no idea what it meant – if in fact it meant anything.
“Why are you here, Detective Zhong?” she asked. But he heard the waver in her voice. The inherent pause. The uncertainty that prison had already implanted in her.
“How long is your sentence?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes. As someone who has been in a place like this, yes, it matters. On that, trust me.”
“Well, they haven’t decided yet.”
“When are they going to decide?”
She made a sound that in the time before the murder would no doubt have been called a laugh. Now, prison had modified the sound and it was little different than the sound made to clear the throat before spitting up phlegm.
Fong made himself go over the timeline. The murder had taken place only ten days ago so it was possible that she would be sentenced shortly but it was not likely. If they were going to sentence her it should have happened by now. If they were going to execute her he wouldn’t have been allowed to see her. Likely she would be imprisoned as long as the authorities thought it useful. That could be as little as three years or as long as her life.
“What are you doing here, Detective Zhong?” she asked again.
“I want to talk to you.”
“Well, that’s good because if you came here to fuck me that could prove above even your ingenuity.” She looked at Joan Shui for a second then said, “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Joan said.
“Have you got a cigarette?”
“Sorry,” said Joan.
“I do,” said Fong.
He had brought cigarettes for precisely this situation but now he hesitated. He didn’t want to bribe her to talk to him. He wanted her to want to talk to him.
The woman who had murdered the man she loved lifted her left buttock and farted loudly. She waved her hand in the air in front of her to dissipate the odour. “Sorry, but the food in here isn’t exactly agreeing with my gastric system.”
Fong smiled. Then took the smile off his face. “Why am I at such a loss here?” he asked himself. Before he completed the question he shouted the answer at himself in the recesses of his head, “Because, jerk, you don’t know why you’re here.” He reached into his shirt pocket, tapped out a Kent and held it out to her.
She reached for it, careful not to touch the skin of his fingers or hand. She put the cigarette between her lips. It was only then that he noticed they were bruised.
“Did someone hit you?”
“You’ve been in prison before, right? People get hit in prison. I need a light.”
He struck a stick match on the floor and held it up to her. The flaring of the match touched moments of light to the skin of her face. Little licks of beauty.
She breathed out a thin line of smoke just past Fong’s left ear. Before he could stop himself he breathed in her smoke.
“You smoked too. Interesting,” she said. “Why not join me?”
Fong hadn’t smoked since he’d killed the assassin Loa Wei Fen in the construction site in the Pudong almost seven years ago, but he was direly tempted to break his smoke fast. But he didn’t. “If they hit you again, get word to me and I’ll put a stop to it.”
Again she made the sound that only a few weeks ago must have been a laugh but now sounded like something very different. “Are you really capable of doing that?” she said.
Fong didn’t answer. He didn’t know if he could control events within a prison. He’d never tried.
“It’s better to be hit than raped,” she said.
Fong found himself nodding although he didn’t want to.
She lifted her head, took the cigarette from her lips and stared into his eyes. “Why are you here? Again I ask.”
“To try and understand.”
“Understand what?”
“Understand how you could kill the man you loved,” said Joan Shui.
“Is that really what you want to know?” she asked Fong. He nodded. The woman who killed the man she loved opened her mouth to answer then put her face in her hands. For a moment Fong thought she was going to cry. But she didn’t. “Answer your own question, Detective. You’ve loved, you’ve been in prison, maybe you’ve even killed.”
Fong looked away. The desire to get out of that room roared up from his depths. This woman somehow knew him. How? But he needed her. The simple Chinese word long, dragon, came up to his lips. Dragons always guarded treasure. They had to be defeated to gain the knowledge – or wooed.
“How did you first meet Mr. Clayton?”
“How do you think?” Her voice was harsh. Suddenly the practised whore.
“You were a hired date for him?” Joan asked, careful to keep any annoyance out of her voice.
“I was given to him by a Chinese client. I was there in his hotel room when he returned from a night of drinking. Naked. Waiting. All greased up and ready to go.” She noticed Fong wince at that last. “Nothing to be embarrassed about, Detective Zhong. Ready to go because I didn’t want to get pregnant. Greased up because it wasn’t likely that I’d produce much lather at the possibility of fucking this Long Nose or any Long Nose for that matter. Or so I thought. Can I have another smoke?”